Architectures and Fortified Settlement Systems of Ager Nolanus. The Avella’s Norman Castle

The research activities conducted in the territory of the ancient Ager Nolanus saw the thicken of a large number of ruins of many settlement marks, all referabled, by origin, to the so-called urban phenomenon of incastellamento and, by the present situation, to a diffused oblivion condition that relegate these emblematic testimonies of medieval architectural heritage in a persistent state of neglect and decay. The surviving structures of the eighteen census fortified systems, almost always in ruin state and at risk of protection, after they lost them original matrix, certainly military, but economic and social also, show the important issues of conservation of artistic and environmental heritage and recall attention to the issues of regeneration of urban centers that require interventions of integration between memory and modernity. The tricky question of regeneration of urban centersre quires the convergence of various areas of expertise and different research lines, placing in the foreground the choices of method and the definition of the working tools and imposing the need to build appropriate knowledge struc‐ tures capable of reading, represent and simulate, through the complexity of spatial and temporal consistencies of sites and specific architectures, the value of the potential relationships between the ancient pre-existing and current urban centers, suggesting a hierarchy of protection and enhancement actions for our heritage cultural. In order to start a critical knowledge system of our object of interest, we predisposed a documentary investigation that studied and compared the settle‐ ment’s morphologies in the area of interest, analyzing each case, the original nature in the various sites and reading them in relation to the layers and the used transformations connected to the architectural and planning local event. The deepening of the comparative study identified the relative position between the current urban center and the specific fortified origin system, the greater parameter of reference in relation with the abandonment of architectures. The case of Avella’s fortified citadel, despite being paradigmatic of those medieval settlements which were isolated from the next urban development, if on the one hand basically performs in a state of ruin and devoid of a true reutili‐ zation of its surviving structures, it is not abandoned by all action of protection, and is, therefore, still, on the whole ‘recoverable’ as a unified architectural-urban system with the full identity of cultural heritage and significant regenerative potential. To that complex was dedicated a further stage of the study proposed here in order to show that, if the physical distance from the current location of the ancient to the center of the city clearly cannot be healed, the opportunity to increase their knowledge of the site through effective representation that accurately communi‐ cate consistencies and, together, the specific interpretive potential for the construction of the place’s significance, can certainly reduce the distance between the Avella’s community and this significant example of our architectural and cultural heritage. In the context of the integrated survey method adopted and restitution, the availability of the points cloud, which assembled the numerous predisposed laser scans in a special plane of survey, was an invaluable tool in particular to read the layers of the castle, and locate, with good clarity, remains and traces needed to orient the virtual reconstruction that was necessary to study and formulate to meet not only the requirements for reinstatement in the context, but especially those of the appropriate and urgent monitoring on the ruins of the fortified citadel.